Mendocino County Today: Thursday 12/18/2025

Light Rain | Jane Stevens | Old Structure | Climate Trigger | Local Events | Remembering Theresia | Recognizing Haschak | John Stover | Thomas Thomason | Omholt Guilty | Egg Box | Yesterday's Catch | Three Blues | Maggie Smith | Principle Pete | The Don | Talbot Interviews | Suspect Sketch | Church Tax | Christmas Wish | Glenn Dickey | Anton Cermak | I Die | Chester Burnett | Lead Stories | Economy Speech | Bully Boy | Lost Generation | Man's World | Zapatista Reading | Back Up | A Nativity

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LIGHT RAIN expected Thursday. Moderate to locally heavy rain forecast to return late Thursday night into Friday or mostly Del Norte, Humboldt and Trinity Counties. Moderate to locally heavy rain is forecast to have greater impacts on Lake and Mendocino Counties this weekend and early next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 47F with partly cloudy skies this Thursday morning on the coast with another .13" in the rain gauge. Our forecast calls for rain starting at 7am this morning but I'm not seeing it that early, we'll see ? Our mostly steady rain pattern continues thru next week but there will be breaks in the action along the way like yesterday provided. The forecast amounts for this weekend look big but again, they keep changing.

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JANE ELLEN STEVENS

Jane Ellen Stevens, a groundbreaking journalist, world traveler, great friend and cat lover, died in Gualala, Calif., on Nov. 30 after a long battle with brain cancer. She beat the odds for many years before it finally got her.

Jane was born in New Jersey in 1948 to Francis Stevens and Genevieve Wisniewski. Her father was in the military and Jane had a well-stamped passport in her very early years. When her parents divorced, Jane and her mother returned to the U.S. and landed in Lexington, Kentucky, where Jane grew up.

She graduated from the University of Kentucky with a degree in zoology and then attended the University of Miami to study marine biology. She found her calling as a writer, switched gears and earned an M.A. in communications from the University of Georgia. She began working at the Boston Globe as a copy editor, and then moved on to the San Francisco Examiner, where she worked as an assistant foreign/national editor, marketing columnist, magazine writer and science and technology reporter.

Always ahead of the curve, in the early 1980s she wrote one of the first computer technology columns in the country. But her interests were wide-ranging and her work at the Examiner included first-person stories on race-car driving and performing as a Raiderette cheerleader for the Oakland Raiders.

In 1988, she left newspapers and founded GlobalQuest Feature Service, a syndicated science and technology feature service. The service provided articles to 20 newspapers around the world, ranging from the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe to the Singapore Straits Times, the London Times, and Asahi Shimbun's weekly magazine in Japan.

For four years, she lived and worked in Kenya and Indonesia, where she continued to report on science and technology. She traveled extensively, doing science reporting in Southeast Asia, Central and South America, and Russia. She went to Antarctica three times in the winter aboard icebreakers to explore the Antarctic sea ice ecosystem. Her writing appeared in magazines ranging from National Geographic to Vogue.

She later became a digital and video journalist. As a consultant, she worked with many news organizations making a transition from traditional print, radio or TV to digital news.

Her video work, for the New York Times and then for Discovery Channel's website, included a project with Discovery that focused on violence prevention. For several years, she specialized in violence epidemiology. She co-founded the Reporting on Violence Project with Berkeley Media Studies Group, which encouraged news organizations to modernize crime reporting by adding a scientific and prevention, public health perspective.

As an associate faculty member at the Knight Digital Media Center at the University of California at Berkeley, she helped develop the school's first online multimedia reporting tutorials, which were used by reporters around the world. She later taught at the journalism schools at the University of Missouri and the University of Kansas.

In late 2011 she returned to her home base in Yolo County, Calif. to launch ACEs Connection. For the rest of her life, her work was focused on spreading the word about the lifelong impact of childhood trauma on adults and the significant difference that positive experiences can have in terms of healing. For her work in the PACEs (Positive and Adverse Childhood Experiences) movement, Jane received the Academy on Violence & Abuse 2019 Change Maker Award and the Community Resilience Initiative 2019 Resilience Champion.

In her spare time, Jane managed to get her pilot's license. She also dabbled in marriage several times before realizing that she really preferred living alone with her beloved cats, sometimes as many as seven.

Jane's friends will gather to remember her sometime next year. In the meantime, donations can be made in her honor to The Institute for Nonprofit News.

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OLD STRUCTURE off Highway 128 between Yorkville and Cloverdale (Annie Kalantarian)

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DOES MENDO DARE UTTER THE WORDS ‘CLIMATE CHANGE’ TO THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION?

by Mark Scaramella

Supervisor Ted Williams’ innocuous sounding legislative platform proposal — “Proposed Amendments to the 2026 Mendocino County Legislative Platform” — sparked an odd mini-controversy on Tuesday when his colleagues worried that his use of the phrase “climate change” in the text might trigger grant denials by the Trump administration.

Williams proposed to replace page 13 of the County’s already unwieldy legislative platform (aka fantasy wish list) which had been titled “Climate Resilience & Renewable Energy” with text titled: “Climate Change.” The title change was accompanied by three pages of associated generic particulars all beginning with “support” or “advocate,” but which used the phrase “climate change” a shocking five times. The text was so generic that we suspect it might be a violation of the County’s no-artificial-intelligence policy.

In theory, these supposed goals — conservation, energy efficiency, electric cars, solarization, etc. — might lead to “net zero” emissions someday, not that anybody’s actually measuring.

The Williams proposal said that because of climate change Mendo’s FEMA Risk Index is quite high for wildfire, drought, earthquake, landslide and “riverine flooding,” but he did not mention tsunamis. So whew! — no need to worry about them, thank Jah.

Williams’ intro concluded, “Climate change is driven by environmental degradation from pollution and greenhouse gas emissions globally. And while Mendocino County forests and ecosystems sequester more global warming carbon emissions than the county emits, it shoulders a disproportionate burden from the negative climate change impacts of global warming driven sea level rise, wildfires, flooding, severe storms, heat waves and droughts.”

and,

“As a low income rural region with constrained economic capacity, Mendocino County needs state and federal assistance [aka grant cash] to remediate global warming impacts and adapt to the new environmental conditions climate change imposes.”

Supervisor Madeline Cline said that county staff had recommended avoiding use of certain words in grant applications that might trigger denials from the Trump Administration.

Supervisor Williams asked to see a copy of what staff had recommended. Cline couldn’t produce a piece of paper, but CEO Darcie Antle agreed that staff had recommended avoiding use of certain no-no words and phrases that the Trump administration frowned on to make federal grant applications more likely to be approved.

Supervisor John Haschak read from a news article on his county computer screen describing a recent lawsuit where the State of Illinois won a legal case after “use of language and those touch words like women, blacks, diversity and climate change” had led to the denial of a grant. Illinois won the suit and got the grant, but it took a lawsuit to do it. “This gives us hope that we don’t have to walk away from our belief that there is climate change,” said Haschak, “or go for net zero emissions or diversity. We don’t need to compromise our language.”

But later in the discussion Haschak seemed to reverse himself mentioning a recent example where his Third District lost a $40 million FEMA wildfire safety grant because “DOGE” (Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency) had flagged it, implying that there may be other ways to say “climate change” without actually saying “climate change.”

Supervisors Bernie Norvell and Madeline Cline didn’t object to the generic objectives of Williams’ proposal, but worried that changing from “climate resiliency” to “climate change” might trigger “retaliation” from the Trump administration via denial of federal grants.

Several members of the public who were involved with or supported the Williams proposal staunchly defended the use of “climate change” and urged the board to stand on principle.

Supervisor Maureen Mulheren said that somehow in the shuffle the Williams proposal didn’t incorporate parts of the previous legislative platform that should still be included. Williams agreed that he didn’t mean to delete whatever those were.

With that, the Board saw an opportunity to side-step the issue and have Williams come back at a later date with a revised proposal that incorporates the previous stuff that apparently didn’t have to do with “climate change.”

Given Williams’ view that his Fifth District constituents strongly support continuing to use “climate change” in the legislative platform, the language question is likely to trigger another discussion the next time the subject arises.

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LOCAL EVENTS (this weekend)

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SAMUEL BAKER:

A calm spirit, a strong woman, Theresia Kobler was that and so much more. Whether touring Europe on a 3rd hand motorcycle behind her fiancé, soon to be husband Hans, or standing waist deep in the cold, rushing Lazy creek, pouring pilings for a bridge to her home, she was a rock. Meeting them in the late 1970’s as we scouting AV for a property, they became suppliers of very good wine, then friends and mentors. She was the still water between (sometimes) tempestuous Hans, and (sometimes) rebellious son Norman. All together they were a force; hardworking, generous, and just fun to be around. Sitting under the tree in their shady backyard, petting their pet pig, watching the huge rottweler with his pet mallard in tow, learning about planting and trellising, those were some of my best days with the Koblers

After Hans’ death and her own failing health, I was pleased and relieved that she spent her last years with Norman, Colleen, and their sons. From personal experience, I know of the challenges of an elderly relative in the house hold, but she was so family centric that any other arrangement would not have been her wish.

Goodbye Theresia, you left a good mark on our family, and so many more.

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SUPERVISOR MAUREEN MULHEREN:

After seven years of service, Supervisor John Haschak has announced that he will not be seeking re election in District 3.

Serving on the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors is meaningful work and also very demanding. It asks a lot of those who step into the role, from listening to individual needs to making decisions that affect the whole County. John has shown up with a clear commitment to public service and a strong focus on supporting seniors and community members who rely on a strong safety net.

As Board Chair this year, John has taken on additional responsibility in helping guide meetings and ensure that the public and his colleagues have space to be heard. That role requires care, patience, and time, and I want to acknowledge that effort.

Our shared commitment to Mendocino County has always been clear, even when our views on the best path forward were not always the same. I appreciate John’s dedication to the work and his decision to complete his term with intention. I wish him well in his next chapter and thank him for his years of service to our community.

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JOHN E. STOVER

John E. Stover passed away on December 1st, 2025.

He was born on May 23 1955 in Aurora Illinois to John and Nellie Stover. He was the second of seven children born to the couple.

At the age of 3 John moved with his family to Fort Bragg California the place he would call home for much of his life. John discovered his lifelong love of fishing at just 8 years old, a passion that stayed with him through every chapter of his journey. As a teenager he was adopted by his uncle and aunt Woodrow and Catherine Stover who continued to guide and support him into adulthood. At seventeen John proudly joined the United States Marine Corps answering the call to serve his country. He later transferred to the United States Army where he dedicated 16 years of honorable service. His time in the Military shaped his character instilling discipline, strength, loyalty and a deep sense of purpose. In 2011 John reunited with the love of his life Nancy Hayter with whom he had known for 25 to 30 years and always believed he would and one day share his life with. Their partnership was one of deep devotion, companionship and enduring love.

John is survived by his beloved life partner Nancy Hayter, sisters Janet Gough of Arksansas Nellie Thompson of California as well as many nieces and nephews who loved him dearly as Uncle Johnny. He is preceded in death by his parents John and Nellie Stover his adopted parents Woodrow and Catherine Stover his brothers “Bobo” Stover and Carl Stover Sr. his sisters Mellvie Jean Stover and Linda Stover.

John will be remembered for his warm heart, his loyalty to family, his love for the outdoors and his unwavering dedication to those he cared for, His legacy lives on in the memories he leaves behind and in the hearts of all who knew and loved him.

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THOMAS CHARLES THOMASON

Thomas Charles Thomason passed away December 24, 2024 in his home located in Redwood Valley, California. Catherine Christiansen and her daughter Trinity Thurner were present at his passing. His dog Tug, his horses Chick and Sweda and newly adopted Cat were on the property.

He married his wife, Barbara Jean Zilch-Thomason on July 1, 2000. Barbara passed on June 6, 2023. They moved to Redwood Valley in 2016 from Healdsburg, CA where they were involved in many High Country Trail Riding Groups; The Russian River Riders, the Sonoma County Santa Rosa Driving & Riding Club, the Reno Sierra Riders and the Sonoma County Trail Blazers.

Thomas was born on June 6, 1947 in Providence Rhode Island to Charles Thomason and Dorothy Traynor (both predeceased). Thomas served in the Special Forces as a weapons mechanic in the Air Force during the Vietnam Era and stayed in close contact with his Military Brothers. He was honorably discharged and awarded the National Defense Service Medal and the Vietnam Service Military Achievement Award.

After the war, Thomas, became a Sales Manager for a Grocery Distribution before a head on car accident severely injured him. He then became a well known saddle maker in Healdsburg, CA and a bus driver for the Healdsburg School System and was well loved by the students who rode on his bus. Thomas will be remembered for his perfect fit saddles, his quick wit and smile and his generosity with friends. His neighbors will remember him riding his tractor everyday on his property with the American Flag proudly displayed and waving in the wind. His porch also proudly displays the American Flag. Every day with Thomas was an adventure. He was a Christian and survived by a sister who lives in the East part of the country, Caryl Thomason. He is sorely missed by all who knew him.

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ATTEMPTED KILLER OUTSIDE OF CASINO FOUND GUILTY.

A Mendocino County Superior Court jury returned from efficient deliberations Wednesday morning to announce it had found the trial defendant guilty as charged across the board.

Defendant Jason Ryan Omholt, age 44, of Willits and Humboldt County, was found guilty of attempted murder, assault by force likely to cause great bodily injury, and assault with a deadly weapon (knife).

The jury also found true special allegations alleging that the defendant had personally used a deadly or dangerous weapon in the commission of each offense and that he inflicted great bodily injury on the stabbing victim.

After the jury was excused, an additional evidentiary hearing was scheduled for December 29th where at the prosecution will present evidence to show the defendant has two prior Strike convictions – robbery and assault with a deadly weapon on a peace officer – out of Humboldt County.

The prosecution will also present additional evidence beyond what was proven at trial to further prove up that the attempted killing was aggravated within the meaning of the California Rules of Court.

Defendant Omholt’s potential state prison exposure at the time of sentencing is expected to be up to 39 years to life.

The law enforcement agency that responded to the 9-1-1 call from the Sherwood Valley Casino on the night of March 6, 2025, searched for, located (hiding under a bed), and arrested the attacker, and gathered the evidence used at trial was the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office.

Additional investigation and trial support was provided by the DA’s own Bureau of Investigations.

Special thanks are extended to the expert witness from Adventist Health Howard Memorial who testified as to the full trauma response and treatment provided to the victim.

Special thanks are also extended to Stutchman Forensic Laboratory for assistance with video forensics that pieced together feeds from nine separate casino surveillance cameras for use at trial.

The prosecutor who presented the People’s evidence at trial was District Attorney David Eyster. DA Eyster will continue to personally handle this matter at the December 29th hearing and then through sentencing.

Mendocino Count Superior Court Judge Keith Faulder presided over the three-day trial.

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JENNIFER BIRD: Trying the egg box again….$6 per dozen

Money was always short last year so I gave up. But I’m trying again. $6 a dozen. Couple hundred feet up Signal Ridge Road on the right.

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Wednesday, December 17, 2025

CHARLES BARKSDALE III, 44, Elk Grove/Ukiah. DUI, taking vehicle without owner’s consent, stolen vehicle.

KENDALL JENSEN, 38, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

CHRISTOPHER KEYES, 41, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

NATHANIEL KIUGLER, 22, Fort Bragg. Under influence, public nuisance, probation revocation, resisting.

JOSE LOPEZ-FLORES, 23, Ukiah. Registration tampering, suspended license for DUI, contempt of court.

MICHAEL MCMANAMAN, 31, Redwood Valley. Controlled substance/narcotic for sale while armed with loaded firearm.

CODY MENDEZ, 22. Ukiah. Under influence, probation violation.

LARRY MORFORD II, 52, Willits. Failure to register as felony sex offender with prior, transient registration.

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THREE O’CLOCK BLUES

Well now it's three o'clock in the morning
And I can't even close my eyes
Three o'clock in the morning baby
And I can't even close my eyes
Can't find my baby
And I can't be satisfied

I've looked around me
And my baby she can't be found
I've looked all around me, people
And my baby she can't be found
You know if I don't find my baby
I'm going down to the Golden Ground
That's where the men hang out

Goodbye, everybody
I believe this is the end
Oh goodbye everybody
I believe this is the end
I want you to tell my baby
Tell her please please forgive me
Forgive me for my sins

— Lowell Fulson (1948)

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PETE PETER PRINCIPLE

Editor:

Judging from the recent exodus of frustrated top-tier talent from our nation’s Defense Department, it is becoming apparent that Defense Secretary and former weekend television anchor Pete Hegseth epitomizes the “Peter” in Peter Principle.

Dave Delgardo

Cloverdale

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WHO'S NEXT?

Editor:

This business of killing people in small boats that Donald Trump thinks came from Venezuela makes me more than a little uneasy. Until the order and designating Venezuelan drug smugglers as “narco-terrorists,” the U.S. Coast Guard stopped and boarded vessels if there was reason to believe the vessels were used to run drugs. Often, no trace was found. If the crew had jettisoned the drugs and no trace was found that could lead to a conviction, at least the drugs were lost to the depths of the ocean. Nobody was murdered. Not a bad outcome.

I was a platoon leader in the Army from 1970-1972. It was made very clear to every person in the Army that killing non-combatants, or people who had no means to resist, was a war crime and murder. In 1968, I remember Lt. William Calley and the slaying of civilians in My Lai, Vietnam. He was convicted of murder by court martial.

Trump labeled these people “narco-terrorists.” “The Don” could just as easily label anybody an enemy — undocumented immigrants, anybody who disagrees with him or anybody that he doesn’t like.

Bruce Oman

Petaluma

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STEVE TALBOT:

As many of you know, I went to the West Bank in October to spend three weeks filming a documentary about the dilemmas and challenges faced by Palestinian Christians. During my stay, which was both sobering and inspiring, the ceasefire in Gaza was declared. Today, we launched a YouTube channel featuring excerpts from five interviews I did with four Palestinian Christians and one very progressive Jewish rabbi -- a sample of what's to come in the film which I hope to complete and release in the spring.

The title of the film and the channel: "Last Christian in Bethlehem."

Take a look: https://www.youtube.com/@LastChristianinBethlehem

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

Why should religious businesses pay no tax?

The Catholic Church is the largest and richest religious institution in the world. With an estimated worth of $2.5 trillion!

The church's wealth comes from its huge network of properties, investments, and businesses spread across the globe. While it is based in Vatican City, the church operates in almost every country in the world. The wealth of the Catholic Church is not just in tithes and donations but also in real estate holdings, investments, and even art collections.

The Catholic Church’s investment arm, known as the Vatican Bank, also manages billions of dollars in assets.

The LDS Church, also known as the Mormon Church, has accumulated a vast fortune, with an estimated wealth of $100 billion in 2025.

These 'Churches', in name only, pay no Federal and State income tax in the US.

Is that fair you reckon? I don't.

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THE GREAT SLIDE

Editor,

Decades ago, I realized that any closed system featuring continuous growth as a core component was doomed to collapse, often catastrophically. Like fruit flies in a jar, reproducing until their food is exhausted, any closed system must have negative feedback mechanisms to limit growth or risk self-destruction.

In my lifetime, 75 years so far, the global human population has approximately tripled while whole ecosystems have vanished and thousands of species have gone extinct. Our planet is a closed system. Whatever the “carrying capacity” of Earth is, eventually humanity will exceed it — unless we find ways to manage our growth. Resources are not infinite and can only be stretched so far.

One major feedback mechanism is our global economy, which is now fundamentally capitalist. This system incentivizes and rewards growth. Enterprises that do not grow their top and bottom lines are punished and cast aside, replaced by others that grow to service and exploit the growing global population. This creates a positive feedback loop accelerating growth and hastening eventual collapse.

I am not smart enough to offer any solutions. I agree with Hardy that we need to encourage sociological and behavioral economists to develop changes to our economy, making it sustainable and self-correcting. Perhaps then humanity can avoid the existential threats that Hardy described and that we all feel more acutely each day.

Ironically, I am optimistic and believe that humans are smart enough to find solutions that serve the best interests of all mankind. That is my Christmas wish, anyway.

Jack Dillon

San Anselmo

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GLENN DICKEY, CHRONICLE’S LONGTIME ACERBIC SPORTS COLUMNIST, DIES AT 89

by Shayna Rubin

Glenn Dickey, a longtime sportswriter and sharp-tongued columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle for more than 40 years, has died.

Just two months shy of his 90th birthday, Dickey died in Oakland on Friday after having battled an illness for several years.

Though he retired from writing his column nearly 20 years ago, Dickey’s Sporting Green legacy endures through his brutally honest, influential style that made his writings must-read in the Bay Area for decades.

“His strongest quality was that he always had an opinion,” said Lowell Cohn, a former colleague at the Chronicle who called Dickey a friend. “A lot of people disagreed with his opinions, but that showed that he’s effective. You aren’t writing columns to get people to agree with you, you’re writing them to think and to talk. He was A+ at that.”

Dickey was born in Virginia, Minn., on Feb. 16, 1936, and his family moved to California when he was 10. He attended UC Santa Barbara initially before heading to Cal. He got his start in journalism at the Watsonville Register-Pajaronian in 1958 before migrating to the Chronicle in 1963.

It was at the Chronicle that Dickey became a potent voice in the sports landscape. He didn’t mess with flowery prose, but stated plain and simple his opinion on the state of each Bay Area team. That meant issuing bold declarations on which decision-makers should get fired or hired, what trades should go down and which players should get a chance or be benched. He was one of the first to vouch that the 49ers hire Bill Walsh as head coach and that the Giants hire Frank Robinson as manager.

His opinions often crossed into the controversial. He once chided 49ers quarterback Joe Montana when his baby’s due date interfered with the team’s 1986 playoff push and didn’t hold any punches for Willie Mays when he showed signs of slowing down at the end of his Hall of Fame career.

“It was a simple style of writing, yet powerful,” said longtime Chronicle columnist John Shea. “I might be wrong, but he might be the only columnist in Bay Area history to rip Willie Mays and Joe Montana.”

However problematic, Dickey’s opinions were widely read and hotly debated over the local radio waves. Fans and aspiring writers like TR Sullivan – who for three decades worked the Texas Rangers beat – took inspiration from Dickey’s style. Sullivan was attending USF in the 1970s, during Dickey’s second decade at the Chronicle and idolized him.

“He was about as subtle as a punch to the jaw,” Sullivan said. “Glenn Dickey dominated the sports media market in the Bay in the ’70s like no other writer I ever saw.”

Susan Slusser, a longtime writer at the Chronicle, read him while studying at Stanford.

“He was the most discussed sportswriter of his day in the Bay Area. He was a must-read,” she said.

In the press box, Dickey mostly kept to himself and didn’t keep a notebook on him to take notes. He’d take down quotes only through memory and put them in writing without nary a complaint of misquoting. He’d arrive at games and leave, always, with an opinion to trumpet.

“He didn’t seek out other opinions, he liked the idea of setting the law to his own standard,” said longtime columnist Ray Ratto, who worked alongside Dickey. “He was the most powerful sports columnist in the Bay Area because he had the biggest trombone and he wasn’t afraid to use it. I think he enjoyed the conflict and I think he imagined that was the job of the columnist. Eventually that runs out, but he had a long run. That’s the thing you take away from it. He did this for a long time.”

Dickey’s writing didn’t begin and end in the press box. He received hundreds of letters, then emails throughout his career. He knew his words were controversial, his wife Nancy said, and took extra care to respond to each and every correspondence, no matter how angry or kind.

“Over the years, whether it was back in the day a handwritten letter or note that they had to mail to Glenn at the Chronicle, he opened and read and answered every single one,” said his wife of 58 years. “All his career.”

Sullivan recalled meeting Dickey in Oakland over lunch, a meeting a professor organized during Sullivan’s senior year at USF. Dickey sat for 90 minutes to answer each and every question Sullivan had. He became his idol.

“I love that he showed no fear. I love the fact that he loved journalism,” Sullivan said. “You could tell by the way he wrote that he wasn’t a cheerleader, he was a journalist.”

Dickey retired with thousands of bylines and having written at least a dozen books, including tomes on Walsh, Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis and the Oakland A’s dynasties of the ’70s and ’80s.

Dickey was a “voracious reader,” said his wife, who recalled a sprawling collection of books he’d often donate to the Oakland public library. Together, the couple would often travel to Europe, where Dickey explored his passion for fine dining and wine. His wine collection was almost as big as his collection of books.

Dickey is survived by his wife, Nancy, his son, Scott and his wife Sarah Owsowitz, and his brother, Bob. The family asks that, in lieu of flowers and in Dickey’s honor, books be sent to the Oakland public library or donations made to the American Diabetes Association. Dickey had worked and written through many complications from diabetes since being diagnosed in 1985.

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THE SHARP CRACK of gunfire split the air on the warm evening of February 15, 1933, at Bayfront Park in Miami, throwing the crowd into chaos. President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt had just finished a brief speech from an open car when bullets tore through the air, striking Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak and four others.

Cermak, who had stepped forward to greet Roosevelt, collapsed alongside the bystanders, the horror of the moment etched into the faces of all who witnessed it.

The shooter, Giuseppe Zangara, was quickly seized. A small, wiry Italian immigrant and former bricklayer, Zangara had long suffered from severe abdominal pain and mental delusions, which fueled his rage against those in power. He admitted without hesitation, “I have the gun in my hand. I kill kings and presidents first and next all capitalists.” Despite his injuries, Cermak was rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital, struggling to survive the ordeal. Newspapers would later immortalize a line he allegedly spoke to Roosevelt—“I am glad that it was me instead of you”—but eyewitness accounts revealed that this was a fabrication, created to sell papers. Cermak had, in truth, harbored little affection for Roosevelt.

Nineteen days later, on March 6, Cermak died, not directly from the bullet wound but from ulcerative colitis complicated by the trauma of the shooting. His physician confirmed that the gunshot had healed, yet his illness had worsened, claiming his life. Zangara, unrepentant, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to eighty years for attempted murder, quipping to the judge, “Four times twenty is eighty. Oh, judge, don’t be stingy—give me a hundred years.” What had begun as an assassination attempt on a president-elect instead became a tragic story of misfortune, illness, and the cruel randomness of fate, forever marking the lives of both men.

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AND WHEN I DIE

I'm not scared of dying
And I don't really care
If it's peace you find in dying
Then let the time be near
If it's peace you find in dying
When dying time is here
Just bundle up my coffin
'Cause it's cold way down there

When I die, when I'm gone
There'll be one child born
And a world to carry on

My troubles are many
They're as deep as a well
I swear there ain't no heaven
I pray there ain't no hell
I swear there ain't no heaven
I pray there ain't no hell
But I'll never know by living
Only my dying will tell

When I die, when I'm gone
There'll be one child born
And a world to carry on

Give me my freedom
For as long as I be
All I ask of living
Is to have no chains on me
All I ask of living
Is to have no chains on me

When I die, when I'm gone
There'll be one child born
And a world to carry on

— Laura Nyro (1966)

"And When I Die" was the first song written by then-17 year old Laura Nyro. She sold the song to folk group Peter, Paul and Mary for $5,000, who recorded it for their sixth studio album. (wikipedia.org)

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THE STORY OF AMERICAN BLUES cannot be told quietly, and it certainly cannot be told without Howlin’ Wolf. His voice arrived like a force of nature—raw, towering, unmistakable—cutting through jukeboxes and radio waves with a sound that felt older than the songs themselves. Born Chester Burnett, he carried the rural Mississippi Delta into the electric age without sanding down its edges or taming its spirit.

What set Howlin’ Wolf apart was not polish, but presence. His recordings were confrontational in the best sense, demanding attention through sheer authority and emotional weight. Each performance sounded lived-in, as if the music had been carved directly from experience rather than written on a page. There was nothing decorative about it—only truth, volume, and conviction.

Decades later, his work remains essential listening, not as a museum piece, but as living evidence of how powerful honesty can be when amplified. Howlin’ Wolf didn’t chase trends; he stood his ground and let the world adjust to him.

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LEAD STORIES, THURSDAY'S NYT

A Bellicose Trump Points Fingers in Defending His Record on the Economy

Republicans Clinch Democratic Bid to Force Vote on Health Subsidies

Dan Bongino Says He Will Step Down From F.B.I. in January

Trump Administration Aims to Strip More Foreign-Born Americans of Citizenship

N.Y. Governor Will Sign Right-to-Die Bill for the Terminally Ill

Birthrates Are Falling, but Don’t Blame Dogs in Strollers

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KATIE ROGERS: TRUMP’S WEDNESDAY SPEECH:

Trump relied on a lot of old strategies in his remarks. He blamed his predecessor. He promised more relief if people just keep waiting — this time, until next year — to see the change in their paychecks. He floated a cash giveaway. The new thing here was his rushed and angry tone, which suggested the pressure he is under to provide the real economic relief he promised on the campaign trail. Americans are signaling they aren’t feeling it yet. That was an 18-minute speech that will keep fact checkers busy for hours.

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PRESIDENT TRUMP ANNOUNCED a “total blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going into, and out of, Venezuela” on Truth Social on Tuesday, saying that “Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America. It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before — Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.”

Trump told the press on Wednesday that Venezuela “took all our oil from not that long ago, and we want it back. But they took it. They illegally took it.”

Of course, this is complete nonsense; Venezuela has done no such thing. These empire managers really believe the global south’s resources are their property, and that setting their own energy policy in their own interest is an act of theft.

Venezuela has ordered its navy to escort the nation’s oil tankers to protect them from acts of piracy by US forces like the one we saw last week, which places the US and Venezuelan militaries on a collision course.

We’ll see what happens, but as things sit right now it’s not looking good for peace.

❖

If you weren’t having enough Iraq flashbacks lately, Trump just signed an executive order naming the drug fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction”. The Trump administration has been accusing the Venezuelan government of trafficking the dangerous narcotic despite the US government being fully aware that Venezuela doesn’t produce fentanyl.

That’s right buddy, the US is preparing for a regime change war justified by lies again, in an oil-rich nation again, and they’re citing “weapons of mass destruction” again.

❖

It’s so American how the Sackler family caused a national opioid crisis which ultimately led to the fentanyl crisis, and instead of imprisoning them the US eventually went “Hang on, we can use this as an excuse to start a war with a country that doesn’t even produce fentanyl.”

❖

I hate right wing Venezuelans. They’re the worst of everything. They use the same “how DARE you tell us about our lived experience??” identity politics shtick that shitlibs love in order to shout down anyone who points out that US regime change interventionism is reliably disastrous, while also using all the sleazy reptile-brained political weapons of rightists to attack women, minorities, and socialists. They’re like Latino Israelis.

❖

Lindsey Graham, who is arguably the nastiest warmonger in the US Senate, is defending Trump’s attacks on boats in the Caribbean by saying that “I have every confidence that what they’re doing is no different than what Bush did.” This is the same Lindsey Graham who said “Trump is my favorite president” because he’s “killing all the right people.”

Who loves Donald Trump? Only people who love war.

— Caitlin Johnstone

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ARE WHITE MEN A ‘LOST GENERATION’? Interview With Author Jacob Savage

The disenfranchisement of young men has already come at a heavy cost, and the biggest consequences likely lay ahead

by Matt Taibbi

From Jacob Savage in Compact:

“The doors seemed to close everywhere and all at once. In 2011, the year I moved to Los Angeles, white men were 48 percent of lower-level TV writers; by 2024, they accounted for just 11.9 percent. The Atlantic’s editorial staff went from 53 percent male and 89 percent white in 2013 to 36 percent male and 66 percent white in 2024. White men fell from 39 percent of tenure-track positions in the humanities at Harvard in 2014 to 18 percent in 2023.

In retrospect, 2014 was the hinge, the year DEI became institutionalized across American life.”

Savage’s piece, which is rocketing around the Internet this week, describes a bait-and-switch. A generation of young white men raised to believe in traditional liberal principles like racial liberation, equal pay, and gay rights woke up in the early 2010s to discover they’d somehow signed on to a program of disenfranchising themselves. What started out as an anecdotal hassle, dangerous even to whisper about, suddenly became undeniable statistical truth, and millions of men like Savage who didn’t want to leave what Savage calls his “home” (Liberal America) were not only forced out, but left facing the reality of a society “deliberately rooting against you.”

Regrettably, I was part of it. In 2014, the year Savage refers to as “the hinge,” I started work at an American corporation for the first and only time, in a job with hiring responsibilities. I’d left Rolling Stone to work for eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, ostensibly to head a satirical complement to The Intercept. Before the publication had a name, before we had authority to buy pencils or an office computer, we were already rejecting applicants for racial reasons.

The interviews were surreal. Young men in their early thirties walked in with heads hanging, expecting the exact dynamic Savage describes in his article: white-guy Gen-X bosses telling younger counterparts there was no room for them. Making things worse was the fact that my project was meant to be a digital homage to Mad, Cracked, and Spy, publications whose readers were overwhelmingly rebellious boys and young men, so stacks of resumés came in from the grown versions. We had to turn them away, as the Omidyar bosses insisted on stressing diversity goals, which were more than once expressed to me not so much as efforts to hire more women and minorities, but as a cap on white guys. “The world doesn’t need more Gawkers,” is how it was put to me in one meeting.

Six years later in 2020, a writer I’d tried and failed to hire, Lee Fang, got in hot water at The Intercept over a preposterous non-incident. At the peak of Summer-of-Floyd mania, Fang interviewed a black man in the Bay Area who’d had two cousins murdered. The man, who went by the name Maximum Fr, wondered “why does a Black life matter only when a white man takes it?” For the crime of tweeting that video, Fang, who is Asian — absurdly, there were no white people in this alleged racism story — was accused of being racist by a black female co-worker. To save his job, Fang was dragged before HR and made to issue a public apology for “insensitivity to the lived experience of others.”

In covering that episode I interviewed a handful of writers from other places who had similar experiences. All were more skittish than bank whistleblowers or intelligence sources. They’d call back multiple times, or late at night, to make sure I didn’t give away identifying details like their beats or, in one particularly weird case, a time zone. Savage described the same issues in writing his piece about what he calls the “Lost Generation” of millennial men:

“There were frenzied pre-publication negotiations over what personal details I could include, back-and-forths over words and phrases, requests to change pseudonyms to sound even less like real names. Standing behind it was a fear: that they would end up being that guy.”

Savage’s piece is itself written carefully. He doesn’t blame women or minorities or anyone in particular for his own rough experience climbing the not-ladder, scalping tickets for fifteen years while he waited for a screenwriting break that never came. Instead, he focuses on his own experience and regrets, with the most powerful part a personal confession:

“Mostly I’m annoyed at myself. Because instead of settling down, proposing to my then-girlfriend (now wife), and earning a steady income that might support a family, I spent a decade insisting the world treat me fairly, when the world was loudly telling me it had no intention of doing so.”

You’ll hear more from Savage in the Q&A below, but a word first about an issue that’s long been taboo and matters quite a bit, whether or not you empathize with young men who for the first time are getting a taste of what women and minorities long went through as a matter of course:

Savage cites a lot of statistics. “In 2014, white men were 31 percent of American medical students,” he writes. “By 2025, they were just 20.5 percent—a ten-percentage-point drop in barely over a decade.” The percentage of white men at Amazon dropped 34% in ten years. In some cases, a decade or so was all it took for numbers to go from maybe too high to impossibly low. TV staff writers were 64& white and 71% male in 2011-2012, but just 11.9% of lower-level writers in 2023, compared to 34.6% for women of color.

Well, society has mostly said until now — who cares? When the New Yorker addressed the subject last month in “What Did Men Do to Deserve This?”, the magazine took a weirdly mocking tone, using it as an occasion to make jokes about high-T denizens of the “Übermensch milieu.” Podcaster Scott Galloway was called out in the lede for being “bald, white, and jacked” and for describing a manly ethos of “getting up at fucking six in the morning.” Author Jessica Winter rolled eyes even at truly alarming stats, like young men killing themselves four times as often as women, though women still attempt suicide more. The grotesque suggestion throughout is that all this is a ruse by conservatives who think “men’s biggest problem is feminism,” and want through their whining to “restrict reproductive rights” and “propagandize about traditional gender roles” as a solution.

But Savage isn’t a conservative or one of Winter’s “white guys… discussing Abundance over beta-alanine smoothies and doing pistol squats to the theme song from ‘Pod Save America’” (good lord, caricature much?). He’s a younger version of a lot of men I grew up around who hoped and expected to marry professional women, support their careers, and keep voting Democratic, only to find themselves kicked out of a club they never knew existed. You won’t find many anti-choice men in grad schools, writing rooms, in the bar or in many other professional sectors, but somehow they’ve all been tagged as secret haters of a type most men found laughable a hundred years ago:

The blue team’s snide disinterest in fixing any of this was symbolized by last year’s lunatic presidential campaign, when the DNC trotted out Tim Walz and Doug Emhoff to define masculinity as “men need to support women.” Despite constant propaganda insisting Republican appeals were all about guns and a return to barefoot-and-pregnant mates, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance got a ton of votes by default just by saying things like “you’re not a bad person because you’re a man,” a simple sentiment Democrats — and the Hollywood screenwriting world Savage spent so many years trying to enter — have had an oddly hard time articulating.

The notion that there are only two ways for men to go, “toxic masculinity” and the New Yorker/MSNOW “just get with the program” vision, won’t lead to good places. While there are clearly arguments over just how organic the support is for people like Nick Fuentes, it’s clear he has some following, and a lot of what he’s channelling is anger at a society that’s closing off economic opportunities at the same time it’s burying us in messaging about white men as villains and oppressors, as if today’s 23-year-olds worked for the Botha government in the womb. Millennial men don’t need MREs dropped on their lawns by helicopter or special consideration by college admissions officers, but an end to stupid caricatures and identitarian political fads would go a long way. Or would it? I asked Savage:

MT: It sounds like from reading the piece that you’ve been working on this for a couple of years. Is that right?

Savage: It germinated in my mind a couple of years ago, and I loosely started working on it. If you want this scoop, I pitched it to The Atlantic. They were interested, but then they came back and were like, “It has to only be about you and your experience in Hollywood. You could do some statistics or whatever.” Now, I’m happy, and I am the butt of my own joke a little bit in the piece, but just being like, “Here’s a cute piece about a white guy who’s honest about his resentments and experience” doesn’t move the needle. So I said no.

MT: How did they take that?

Savage: They just didn’t care. That’s fine. I think what was interesting is just as long as it was personalized and not globalized to indict any broader system, it would be okay. I put the piece on ice for a little while, wrote this offshoot piece [about white male authors] and Compact was very nice to me. They said, “You should really just do the bigger piece.” And so, in between scalping tickets on the Internet, I’ve been working on this.

MT: If you had done what the Atlantic suggested, it almost would’ve been making the problem worse, wouldn’t it? Part of the problem is these constant efforts to frame the problem as ironic and funny.

Savage: Yeah, I think it would’ve felt – the point would’ve been to keep it small, and you can’t indict a system just by saying any individual anecdote. This is why, in part, it took so long. Any individual anecdote has been dismissed over the last decade or so as sour grapes or whatever, and in some cases it probably was. When you look at the totality of it, though, not everything here was sour grapes. There was something more insidious going on.

MT: How did you settle on the year 2014?

Savage: It just kept coming up. There were a lot of stats that I didn’t end up including in the final piece, but if you look at all these prestige markers, I’m not sure where it fully began in 2014, but that’s the year I think you can just see this steep drop off start in all these awards nominations, and I think living through it, I don’t think people could realize it at the time, but that feels like in retrospect, the year that institutionally things began to really shift. I think in 2013 you could have written a great novel, sent it to a publisher, had them publish it, and maybe no one bought it, because no one buys books anyway – but I think something just got cut off then, and I had various theories as to why.

MT: So, the devil’s advocate question. Why should people care? If nobody wept for women about the glass ceiling all those years, why should people care about millennial men now?

Savage: No one now – maybe a few people, but mostly no one now thinks that those were good things. Also, I’m not convinced everyone should care. I think it’s fine to be like, “I don’t really care.” I just think “I don’t really care” speaks to a profound incuriosity about our larger political moment. I don’t think you can really explain the realignment of younger men and younger white men without some economic understanding of what they, I think fairly accurately perceived, namely that the Democratic party did not care about their economic prospects in any real way. And that’s true. Obviously I’m talking mainly about elite professions, but I think that that’s true down the entire scale.

Put another way, if you want to know why Trump won, you care. I could imagine someone saying, “I don’t care about this. White men have had it good for too long.” And they hate Trump. So why should you care? You should care because these are political actors in society who have a vested interest in how society is. I think people should care from a macropolitical perspective, but I don’t demand that anyone weep over the fate of millennial white men.

MT: It seems like the toughest audiences are going to be liberal audiences. Was there a bait and switch that went on, in which a lot of us were probably committed to racial equality, gay rights, all of those things? And somewhere along the line, the goals seemed to change. Is that how you perceive it?

Savage: I think part of the issue, which I got to a little in the piece, is that there were no goals. There was never a concrete statement: we need X number. It was a radicalizing thing because legally, there were no quotas, so no one could put a number on what the actual goal was. So the goal ended up just being fewer and fewer white men. I do think that a lot of us would’ve fared much better had there just been a quota that was told to us in 2014, and we could go about our lives knowing that and adjusted expectations accordingly, and perhaps pursued careers in other fields. But it was never stated, so you were just left adrift, wondering what happened,

MT: You talked about how your interview subjects were skittish, that they were calling back, worried about their details. Did you also have reservations? Worries about blowback?

Savage: I didn’t, because the truth is, I’m not in any of these institutions anymore in any sense. So I guess that’s the only reason I could write it. Part of me wondered if this was pretty low-hanging fruit. Most of my statistics came from searching the internet. The anecdotes are real research, but why did no journalist in the last 10 years say, “Hey, what’s the deal?” The [Writers Guild of America] released its stats a few months ago, and just 12% of lower level writers were white men.

MT: Down from 60%, which was kind of amazing.

Savage: That’s completely public, and it’s not like Deadline or the Hollywood Reporter was like, where did the white guys go?

MT: Not easy headlines to imagine, of course.

Savage: I think maybe the only way that anyone could write this is to be so removed from these institutions, which is how I kind of personally feel. There’s no blowback. Obviously, this might wind up being good for my career in some way, I guess at this point, but there was no blowback because I’m not in it anymore.

MT: What should young men do, knowing this now? Do you have advice?

Savage: My hope is that it will change, or I don’t think it’s as bad. I mean, I think it’s still happening today, but I don’t think it’s to the extent that it was in 2020 or even 2015. I think if you’re just graduating college today or going to college, hopefully the world is still open to you, or maybe this article will have crafted that door open a little wider… I don’t know. I don’t have advice. My life has taken a bunch of turns, and it’s not like I know what I’m doing.

MT: Fair enough. Thanks, and congratulations on the piece.

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ZAPATISTA READING LIST (2001)

Garcia Marquez/Cambio: Do you still have time to read in the middle of all this mess?

Marcos: Yes, because if not, what would we do? In the armies that came before us, soldiers took the time to clean their weapons and rally themselves. In this case, our weapons are our words, so we have to depend on our arsenal all the time.

Garcia Marquez/Cambio: Everything you say — in terms of form and content — demonstrates a serious literary background on your part. Where does this come from and how did you achieve it?

Marcos: It has to do with my childhood. In my family, words had a very special value. The way we went out into the world was through language. We didn’t learn to read in school but by reading newspapers. My mother and father made us read books that rapidly permitted us to approach new things. Some way or another, we acquired a consciousness of language not as a way of communicating with each other but as a way of building something. As if it were more of a pleasure than a duty or assignment. When the age of catacombs arrives, the word is not highly valued for the intellectual bourgeoisie. It is relegated to a secondary level. It’s when we are in the indigenous communities that language is like a catapult. You realize that words fail you to express certain things, and this obliges you to work on your language skills, to go over and over words to arm and disarm them.

Garcia Marquez/Cambio: Couldn’t it be the other way around? Couldn’t it be this control over language that permits this new era?

Marcos: It’s like a blender. You don’t know what is thrown in first, and what you end up with is a cocktail.

Garcia Marquez/Cambio: Can we talk about this family?

Marcos: It was a middle-class family. My father, the head of the family, was a rural teacher in the days of [Lazaro] Cardenas when, according to him, they cut off teachers’ ears for being communists. My mother, also a rural teacher, finally moved, and we became a middle-class family, I mean, a family without any real difficulties. All of this in the provinces, where the cultural horizon is the society pages of the local newspaper. The world outside, or the great city, Mexico City, was the great attraction because of its bookstores. Finally, there were book fairs out in the provinces, and there we could get some books. Garcia Marquez, Fuentes, Monsiváis, Vargas Llosa — independently of how he thinks — just to mention a few, they all came through my parents. They made us read them. One Hundred Years of Solitude was meant to explain what the province was in those days, and The Death of Artemio Cruz was to explain what had happened to the Revolution. [Carlos Monsiváis’s] Dias de Guardar to explain what was happening to the middle class. To some extent, although naked, our portrait was The City and the Dogs. All those things were there. We were coming out into the world in the same way we were coming to know literature. And this shaped us, I believe. We didn’t get to know the world through a newswire but through a novel, an essay or a poem. And this made us very different. This was the looking glass that our parents gave us, as others might use the mass media as a looking glass or just an opaque glass so that no one can see what is going on.

Garcia Marquez/Cambio: Where was Don Quixote in the middle of all these readings?

Marcos: They gave me a beautiful book when I was 12 — a hardcover. It was Don Quixote de la Mancha. I had already read it but in these juvenile editions. It was an expensive book, a very special present that I was waiting for. Shakespeare arrived after that. But if I could say the order in which the books arrived, it would first be the ‘boom’ literature of Latin America, then Cervantes, then Garcia Lorca, then there was a time of all poetry. Thus, you [pointing to Garcia Marquez] are partly responsible for this.

Garcia Marquez/Cambio: Did the existentialists and Sartre come into all this?

Marcos: No. We arrived late to that. Explicitly existentialist and, before that, revolutionary literature we arrived at already very ‘molded’ — as the orthodox would say. So that by the time we got to Marx and Engels, we were already very contaminated by the sarcasm and humor of literature.

Garcia Marquez/Cambio: There were no readings of political theory?

Marcos: In the first stage, no. From our ABCs we went on to literature and then on to theoretical and political texts about the time we got to high school.

Garcia Marquez/Cambio: Did your schoolmates think you were, or could be, a communist?

Marcos: No, I don’t think so. The most they ever said to me was that I was a radish — red on the outside and white on the inside.

Garcia Marquez/Cambio: What are you reading now?

Marcos: I have Don Quixote by the bedside, and I regularly carry around Romancero gitano, by Garcia Lorca. Don Quixote is the best book out there on political theory, followed by Hamlet and Macbeth. There is no better way to understand the tragedy and the comedy of the Mexican political system than Hamlet, Macbeth and Don Quixote. They’re much better than any column of political analysis.

Garcia Marquez/Cambio: Do you write by hand or on the computer?

Marcos: On computer. Only on the march I had to write by hand because I had no time to work. I write a rough draft, then another and another. You think I’m joking, but it’s like the seventh draft by the time I’m done.

Garcia Marquez/Cambio: What book are you working on?

Marcos: What I was trying to write about was absurd, it was an attempt to explain ourselves to ourselves, which is almost impossible. We have to realize that we are a paradox, because a revolutionary army doesn’t propose to seize power. All the paradoxes we have encountered: that we have grown and become strong in a sector completely alienated from cultural channels.

Garcia Marquez/Cambio: If everyone knows who you are, why the ski mask?

Marcos: A bit of leftover coquetry. They don’t know who I am, and they don’t care. What’s in play here is what Subcomandante Marcos is, and not what he was.

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A NATIVITY

1914–18

The Babe was laid in the Manger
     Between the gentle kine—
All safe from cold and danger—
     “But it was not so with mine,
                        (With mine! With mine!)
“Is it well with the child, is it well?”
     The waiting mother prayed.
“For I know not how he fell,
     And I know not where he is laid.”

A Star stood forth in Heaven;
     The Watchers ran to see
The Sign of the Promise given—
     “But there comes no sign to me.
                        (To me! To me!)
“My child died in the dark.
     Is it well with the child, is it well?
There was none to tend him or mark,
      And I know not how he fell.”

The Cross was raised on high;
     The Mother grieved beside—
“But the Mother saw Him die
     And took Him when He died.
                        (He died! He died!)
“Seemly and undefiled
     His burial-place was made—
Is it well, is it well with the child?
     For I know not where he is laid.”

On the dawning of Easter Day
     Comes Mary Magdalene;
But the Stone was rolled away,
     And the Body was not within—
                        (Within! Within!)
“Ah, who will answer my word?”
     The broken mother prayed.
“They have taken away my Lord,
     And I know not where He is Laid.”

“The Star stands forth in Heaven.
     The watchers watch in vain
For Sign of the Promise given
     Of peace on Earth again—
                        (Again! Again!)
“But I know for Whom he fell”—
     The steadfast mother smiled,
“Is it well with the child—is it well?
     It is well—it is well with the child!”

— Rudyard Kipling

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Philip Holberton:

This poem is the prayer of a mother whose son has been lost in the War. It closely parallels the experience of Carrie and Rudyard Kipling, whose only son John was reported missing on 27th September 1915 in the Battle of Loos. For years his parents sought definite information on his fate from survivors of the battle. No-one had definitely seen him die, so they were left in uncertainty, with diminishing hope that he might be lying unrecognised in some hospital or unreported as a prisoner of war.

According to the Holts (p.161), not until October 1918 did they get a credible account from a sergeant who saw him shot through the head and who laid him dead in a shell-hole. They seem to have accepted it as the end of the matter. What they now needed was to find John’s body and to have a grave and a focus for their grief.

So when this poem was first published on 23rd December 1916, all was still completely uncertain. Hence the recurring lines:

“For I know not how he fell
And I know not where he is laid.”